Farm Friday, October 20th, 2023
Meet Francesca!
When you live in the country, there is no shortage of free cats and kittens. My partner and I have had several opportunities since our beloved Prince passed in July, but we were not ready. This week we decided we were ready and little Franny walked into our lives.
A neighbor posted on an online message board that a calico had come to her farm and was living in her barn. The cat was super friendly, which is unusual for a feral cat, so the neighbor asked everyone who lives nearby if they were missing a cat. Nobody was short a fluffy friendly calico. She contacted every shelter in a 2-hour radius and none of them were accepting new cats. She couldn’t bring the cat inside because her dogs would not tolerate it. So she kept feeding the cat in her barn, with growing concern that the cold or coyotes might get the cat.
That was enough for us to decide to bring little Fluffy home. After a few days, she has the name Francesca, or Franny. She is living in our guest room to give her time to get used to our house being her home. I sleep in there with her, and she loves to snuggle.
For a feral cat to be this friendly, I have to believe she has lived with people before this. Since no one local claims her, I come to the unfortunate conclusion that she was “dumped.” This is actually a common thing that country folks have to deal with. People from town get a dog or cat and then can’t or won’t care for the animal. So they drive out to the country and let the animal out of the car and drive away. It is f***ed up, but everyone I know has stories of finding dogs and cats that have been dumped.
If somebody did dump her off, then little Franny hit the jackpot coming into our house. We got her a full set of vaccines and health tests and she is on the anti-flea and tick medicine. She gets wet food and can sleep inside on a bed. Snuggles and pets whenever she wants, plus our house has (for now) plenty of mice to keep her entertained.
In writing news, my essay examining men and masculinity continues into three weeks of getting strong reactions. The majority are positive, but some men and a few women are saying that I am full of shit. I think the argument is that there is nothing wrong with men or masculinity. Instead, it is individual people, and that Yael might be just attracting the same sort of man because of some signal she is putting out. Also, according to critics, for me to write about men as a group and criticize men at all seems to be an indication that I am sexually frustrated and self-hating.
I dislike personal attacks in this forum and I try to have a thick skin. I try to see if there is some knowledge or insight I can extract from the interaction. I think people are triggered because they think I am attacking men and masculinity. My whole point was to get out of binary thinking about what it means to be a man, so my goal is to encourage a wide range of gender expression for all folks and especially men. I just don’t think there should be room for a masculinity that harms others.
I would like to write another piece to show more love for men.
